


Home Together (The Finding Our Way Remix)

by significantowl



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Disabled Character, Erik has a lot of feelings, First Kiss, M/M, Past minor character death, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is not the sort of person other students strike up conversations with.  His expression, his posture, every part of his manner say: Don’t talk to me.  I don’t want to talk to you.  But none of that stops the boy ahead of him in line with the collapsible white cane, and nothing can stop Erik from falling for him, like it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Together (The Finding Our Way Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kageillusionz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Home Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/906108) by [kageillusionz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageillusionz/pseuds/kageillusionz). 



> Hi, Kage! I hope you enjoy this remix of your lovely, lovely story <33
> 
> A million thanks to Capriccio for the handholding ♥

Erik is a graduate student in the engineering department. He’s tall and ruthlessly thin, two accidents of nature that he uses to his daily advantage. It’s not hard to seem forbidding when you’re looking down at the world from a height, and it only helps if the lines of your body speak of severity and a complete lack of indulgence. Erik is not the sort of person other students strike up conversations with. His expression, his posture, every part of his manner say: Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk to you.

Most days, he can come down to the mediocre coffee shop in the bowels of the Applied Sciences building and get a cup of black without exchanging more than two words with anyone. Today is not one of them.

"Tell me, does it look like they have any cinnamon chip scones?" The boy ahead of him in line is carrying a white collapsible cane, which explains why all of Erik's visual cues have failed. But Erik is skilled in the art of making one word sound like a slamming door, so the fact that the boy continues to talk after the ‘yes’ Erik gives him is completely baffling.

Even more so: the fact that he _leans closer._

"Tell me something else," he says, voice dropping lower. It's not a bad voice to listen to, Erik has to admit, smooth and a little deeper than he might have expected, the accent assured and British. Explains the scone obsession, Erik supposes. "There's meant to be a sugar glaze on top, but sometimes they do lemon by mistake. What would you say it looks like? Sugar or lemon?"

"Why don't you ask the child making them?"

A sigh. “I don't wish to seem as if I'm doubting his abilities.”

“Yet clearly you are.”

“Yes, well,” the boy says, and grins, red lips curving up in a display of amusement and concession that Erik can’t look away from. He’s trying.

“The glaze is white. Not yellow.” The bleary server behind the counter really is a child, a sophomore at best, and Erik’s not sure he trusts him to understand the difference between regular and decaf coffee, much less the intricacies of glazes. But Erik’s willing to concede that ‘boy’ isn't the right term for his current conversational partner. At second or third glance, he's probably only a year or two younger than Erik. It's the height - Erik has five inches on him at least - it's the slightly unruly wave to his hair, and most of all it's the enthusiasm, which Erik finds particularly bizarre since his expectations regarding scones have obviously been dashed repeatedly in the past.

“Brilliant, thank you,” he says happily, taking a step forward as the line moves. He’s not using his cane now, just trailing a hand along the edge of the counter. “One more question?”

Erik sighs, uncomfortably aware it’s more for effect than anything. “We’ve come this far.”

“We have, haven’t we?” Those lips curve again, and Erik wonders if he truly has any idea that every word he’s pulled from Erik’s mouth has been a victory. “Is there an empty table along the wall?”

“Third one back. Just the one.”

“Ah, I see. Well. Care to share?”

“If you count tables as poorly as you count your questions, we’d better,” Erik says, and that’s how it starts.

*

Charles sniffs his scone before he eats it that morning, and on all the mornings that come after.

A poor display of trust, Erik says.

A scientist verifying another’s findings via auxiliary data, Charles says.

In time, he begins to think it’s part of a deeper habit Charles couldn’t break if he tried. He probably began checking his food this way as a very small child. Erik likes that, likes the predictability, the constancy. This thing about Charles will never change.

He likes it that first morning, too, even while he feigns offense. Trust that comes cheaply is hollow, and Erik has had enough of hollowness in his life.

*

Erik can touch Charles on the pretext of guiding him around campus, and he does it often, Charles' sturdy hand wrapped around his arm, just above the elbow, the compact line of Charles' body pressed to his side, and all the warmth that comes with it. Erik doesn't just feel it in his skin; he feels it everywhere.

They walk to the coffee shop together, to the library, to the third-floor lecture room where Charles TA’s a course in introductory genetics. To the restroom, even, straight up to the stall or urinal, but never home.

Raven does that.

Charles calls Raven his best friend when she's there and his sister when she's not. Erik can't help but notice the distinction, the sexual door he closes only behind her back. What he's unsure of is how fully Charles is aware he's doing it, and how he means it; is it a deliberate attempt to speak his truth to Erik, or an unconscious effort to offer the people in his life only what they want to hear?

A good way to keep people around, Erik supposes, but it won’t work forever. Nothing does.

Erik thinks Charles has spent a lot of his life putting other people at ease, making them comfortable with who he is and what he needs, a pattern of behavior as deeply ingrained as the way he approaches food. Everyone has a coping strategy. Charles' is to cultivate other people. Erik's is to push them away.

He watches the flash of hardness in Raven's eyes whenever she looks at Erik, the softness when she looks at Charles. He watches them walk away, bodies perfectly aligned, always in step, shining golden hair flowing towards dappled brown.

*

Sometimes he wonders what it might have been like they'd met earlier. Younger. If Charles had grown into his skin with Erik beside him; if Charles had been at Erik's side the moment he saw the bullet in a tray in the operating room, or stood at his mother's grave for the first time. Maybe now they would be people who know how to ask for what they want.

Erik _wants_. And that's the hardest thing of all. 

It stabs him in the gut, leaves him hot and cold at the same time, makes him sick. He thought he’d pruned it out of his life years ago; better to wither in the dark by choice than to reach for a light that dies.

His schedule and Charles’ don’t always match up. Some days Charles is already settled at a table when Erik makes it down to the coffee shop, sweetened Earl Grey and a scone in front of him, headphones in and oblivious to everything but his screen reader program. He taps Charles on the shoulder, letting him know he has company, and Charles always smiles and says, “Hello, friend,” as he clicks the laptop shut.

Some days he’s very late. He makes it to the doorway only in time to watch Raven slip through the crowd, touch Charles’ right wrist - always the right one - and bend in close. He can’t hear any words. He only sees Charles pull out his earbuds and tip his head up, opening like a flower.

*

Charles doesn’t miss much. When they meet in the noisy, crowded corridor outside Charles’ lecture room, Erik can see him register the tension Erik’s carrying as he fits his grip to Erik’s upper arm. When his mouth turns down in an unhappy slant, he’s deciding what to offer: comfortable chatter or comfortable quiet. It’s a source of endless surprise to Erik that with Charles, he can be soothed by both.

Charles is the sugar he himself loves on his scones, in his tea. He makes bitter days sweeter. He’s an indulgence Erik can't quit.

*

Late-afternoon slump in the coffee shop, well past the time on a Friday when Charles and Raven would normally have left campus for the weekend. Charles is sitting alone, headphones in, elbows propped on the table, head cradled in his hands.

Late, Erik is late, but Raven is even later. He’s soundless as he walks towards Charles’ table. His heavy boots don’t clomp. He’s not thinking about what he’s about to do, because it’s not good, oh, it’s not good, better to hate himself later, after it’s done.

When he touches Charles’ right wrist with one gentle finger, Charles pops his earbuds out and straightens up. So many lines on his face: at the corners of his mouth, around his eyes, between his brows, and Charles makes no effort to smooth any of them away. “Oh hi, Raven,” he says, something brittle and sad in his voice that Erik’s never heard before. He always knew Charles could break, everyone can, but it’s a shock, hearing him so close. “Suppose we’ll go. Erik must not coming today.”

Erik bends down.

It’s fitting, in the end, that pain is his way in. Something Erik _understands_. He brushes his lips to Charles’, thinking with all of his heart and the best parts of his soul: I’m here, I’m always here, even when you believe I’m not.

A sick, twisted slug buried inside of him also knows it’s a test.

But Charles presses his palms to Erik’s cheeks before he kisses back, and buries his nose beneath Erik’s jaw and breathes deep. Stubble and musk and shadow, no brightness, no gold; Charles knows who he’s kissing when he takes Erik’s mouth in turn, sweet as coming home.


End file.
